This is not an exhaustive list, and just because a book is on this list does not mean I endorse everything in it. Instead, this list should serve as a helpful guide for anyone who wants to learn how to defend the Faith. I have ordered it based on topic and noted if a book would best serve beginners (B), is of intermediate difficulty (I), or is an advanced work (A).

I'm sitting in my family room watching the first episode of the HBO series True Detective. It stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Rust Kohle and Marty Hart, homicide detectives for the Louisiana State Criminal Investigations Division. The two are driving along the highway, getting to know one another, and suddenly I'm presented with what must be the most philosophically interesting conversation I've ever witnessed on screen.

No Christian I know would deny that some doctrines are more or less clear than others in Scripture. But when it comes to the atonement of Christ, Scripture is remarkably clear: Jesus Christ died on the cross for the entire world. The redemption that Christ merited through his passion and death was for every single human person who has ever and will ever live.

The Calvinist teaching of "limited atonement" denies this simple truth. We find this teaching in the Calvinist confessions'...

I have to admit, it rattled my Protestant bones to learn, as I explained in part one, that the unanimous testimony of the early Church—in fact, of Christianity until the time of the Reformation—supported a sacramental view of baptism. With this historical truth in mind, I turned to the New Testament. I wanted to read what it had to say about baptism as though for the first time, in the light of what I’d learned.